Dogs have magnetic feng shui thing going on when pooping

Research shows your dog aligns north-south when settling in for a poop. (Getty Images)

All that time your dog spends finding the right spot to poop and then turning in circles only to suddenly pop a squat isn’t just fickle doggyness, and he’s not just trying to make you late for work or suffering from indecision, according to new research in Frontiers in Zoology.

“Our analysis of the raw data … indicates that dogs not only prefer N-S direction, but at the same time they also avoid E-W direction,” said the researchers, most of whom were associated with the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague.

“It is still enigmatic why the dogs do align at all, whether they do it “consciously” (i.e., whether the magnetic field is sensorial perceived (the dogs “see”, “hear” or “smell” the compass direction or perceive it as a haptic stimulus) or whether its reception is controlled on the vegetative level (they “feel better/more comfortable or worse/less comfortable” in a certain direction).”

The crew concludes:

“We demonstrate, for the first time (a) magnetic sensitivity in dogs, (b) a measurable, predictable behavioral reaction upon natural magnetic field (MF) fluctuation in a mammal, and (c) high sensitivity to small changes in polarity, rather than in intensity, of the MF. ”

This means that the dogs are responding to changes in the polarity of the magnetic field rather than changes in intensity. It’s that change in behavior that has the authors of this paper particularly excited, since it’s the first time, according to the paper, that magnetic sensitivity has been proven in dogs and that a predictable behavioral reaction from natural magnetic field fluctuations has been unambiguously observed in mammals.

The scientists suggest their research should have a big impact on animals studies, too.

The phenomenon challenges biophysicists to formulate testable hypotheses for mechanisms responsible for magnetoreception of inconsistencies of the direction of the MF direction. Finally, it forces biologists and physicians to seriously reconsider effects magnetic storms might pose on organisms.